At Catalyst, we met up with Steph, and proceeded to snatch away for the next hour. There's about five gazillion things I need to work on before I snatch proficiently, but with helpful pointers from my friends and Coach Steve Pan (the King of Fast Food), I definitely felt like I sucked a bit less at the end of the session. Best of all, the drop-in class made me want to lift more.
Thankfully, back at CrossFit Palo Alto on Monday, we had power cleans on the menu. As with my snatches, I really need to focus on keeping the bar close to my body during the first and second pulls. Tim pointed out that I was initiating the second pull too early, and that I was leaving the bar too far in front of my body. This, in turn, was causing me to muscle up the bar rather than using my legs to help drive it up. Not good.
Once I made these corrections, my cleans felt a lot more...well, clean. I even matched my previous PR -- though I failed to set a new one.
The metcon of the day? "Helen."
3 rounds for time:
- Run 400 meters
- 21 kettlebell swings (24kg / 16kg)
- 12 pull-ups
Even with my Achilles tendon feeling much better, my running was pathetically slow. Otherwise, I got through Helen without too much trouble, though I didn't manage to hit my goal of going unbroken on all three rounds of the swings and pull-ups.
Result: 10:14 as RXed. A one-second PR!